A dozen people in the construction industry have been arrested in Turkey, where mourning is now giving way to anger, five days after the Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep earthquakes. Despite anti-seismic regulations, many buildings were not up to current standards.
With our special correspondent in Diyarbakir, Celine Pierre-Magnani
The question of the resistance of buildings to earthquakes is a recurring problem in Turkey. Thousands of buildings collapsed in the Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep earthquakes on Monday February 6, betraying their poor construction.
As the rescue operations to find potential survivors are coming to an end, it’s time to take stock. ” It’s not the earthquakes, but it’s the buildings that kill “, do not cease repeating the specialists of the prevention. This Saturday, local media reported that a dozen people in the construction industry had been arrested in the country.
Construction with briquettes
Ali, a 60-year-old from Diyarbakir, one of the ten provinces affected by the disaster, saw his building collapse. He shows a photo of the damage where a whole section of the building has collapsed. ” Well, the building you’re going to see now is the one we lived in, he comments. They did it wrong, that’s why it collapsed like that. No cement, nothing at all, they did it with the briquettes. That’s why many died. I have five cousins who were there. At the moment, we are working to get them out. If there is little chance of finding his five cousins alive, one of them, living on the 6th floor, miraculously survived.
The AKP’s urban transformation policies risk weighing heavily on the party’s balance sheet, with only three months left before the presidential and legislative elections.
More arrests are expected after the Diyarbaki prosecutor announced, still on Saturday, that he had issued 29 arrest warrants, Turkish media report. The Turkish Ministry of Justice has ordered prosecutors from ten provinces to open ” earthquake crime investigation bureaus “.
► To read again: Earthquake in Turkey: the delivery of humanitarian aid faces difficulties
(And with AFP)